


Fight / I keep moving forward.

by Exmilitary



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: A lot of Flashbacks, Character Development, Flashbacks, Manga Spoilers, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-post timeskip, War, canonverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-05 07:07:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16363208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Exmilitary/pseuds/Exmilitary
Summary: In which the only thing Eren wants to do is to protect his homeland, but he has to do it alone and move forward from his past.





	Fight / I keep moving forward.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, it's been a really long time since I've written for AOT, and now that I've returned, it's pretty much all I want to do!  
> I tried to capture glimpses of Eren's hidden POV right now (including scrubbing away the perceived idea that he's pretty much remorseless or without emotion at this point) so I plucked dialogue from the manga and also tried filling in blanks of the timeskip, and a possibility of what could happen in 111, probably to tide me over - watch as the next chapter comes out and literally all hell breaks loose  
> I hope somebody enjoys this as much as I enjoyed writing it for as anti-climatic as it is. (RIP the better half of it is unbeta'd.) I really like Eren's mantra of "keep moving forward".

It is in that moment, struck with a thought, that Eren realizes the world around him, and what it means for them on the island they are on.

His gaze expands past the shining waters, and to the distant horizon. For so many years he’s believed that he was destined to see it, simply because he was born into this world. But now that he stands here, heels sunk into wet sand, the memory of that dream makes him feel naïve. All that is here for him is war.

“On the other side of the walls,” Eren begins, as his back is turned to Armin, “is the ocean. And on the other side of the ocean is freedom. That’s what I’d always believed.” Salty air whips around his sides. He turns his head over his shoulder.

“But I was wrong. It’s enemies that are on the other side of the ocean. This is all exactly as I saw in my father’s memories.”

Mikasa and Armin stare at him, and he suddenly finds his words. “...Right?”

“Those enemies on the other side of here… if we kill them all, does that mean we’ll be free?”

 

—

 

“We need to attack Marley,” says Eren decidedly.

He is seated with Armin, Hange, and Levi around a communal table, where the others have departed for the night so that they can deliberate about this situation - of whatever was this fragile little island. The options that they have. And in Eren’s mind, the answer is clear. Has been from the beginning.

“I mean, don’t you get it? Those people are trying to claim whatever is,” Eren starts, with a backhanded gesture towards the ground, “under this island. And to come for revenge for what our ancestors did thousands of years ago. What if we don’t have the means to defend ourselves in time? We should attack before that happens.”

Hange, on the left of him, folds her hands under her chin. When she speaks slowly and her eyes cast down to the table, she looks like she’s fallen deeply in thought, like this impending stress has been part of her for so long. “We don’t have the luxury to attack, not without any backup. So in any case, our best option is to work out these diplomatic relations. Hopefully Hizuru can lead this island in the right direction since we’ve been making progress.”

Eren looks at her incredulously. “ _What_ progress?”

Levi clears his throat. “Paradis has been living in a stage of being underdeveloped for so long that if we slow it any further, we will have no way _of_ attacking, nor defending when the time comes. The thing we need most is time and we’re trying to use it properly.”

“Exactly, we don’t have any time. That’s why we need to launch a surprise attack,” Eren argues, twisting his head to look at the Captain. “It’d buy us enough time to prevent us from incoming attacks that they’re planning.”

“Eren,” Armin begins with his warning tone. His input is cautious, like if Eren is the thin ice that he’s treading on. “Launching an attack implies that everything would depend on you. That’s _us_ declaring war on the rest of the world.”

“No. I don’t understand how you can sit around and wait for something to happen. Do you want everything to be destroyed again? Because that’s what’s going to happen.”

 _“Eren,”_ Levi says dangerously. “I’ve honestly heard enough of this. You need to think about things for the long-term or else we won’t get anywhere.”

“You should be saying that when Marley and the rest of the world comes to destroy the walls again,” Eren replies indignantly when he stands up and pushes his chair in with great force. It scrapes against the polished floor with a satisfactory noise.

Armin worries at him from the corner, but Eren doesn't care what he thinks. “I’m _right_. Why won’t you just listen to me?” After all this time, his hands have still found a way to curl into fists, ready to fight.

In a split second, the last bit of tension explodes, quietly from under their feet. Levi might as well slam his teacup down if he wasn’t so dignified. “I can’t take _any more_ fucking insubordination from teenagers,” Levi snaps angrily. “Get the hell out. Because I sure can’t have this island losing its last weapon or else we lose _everything_.” And Eren storms out with a rage that he has to find a way to contain, or else everything he wants to protect will fall apart.

 

 

—

 

Thinking of himself as a renegade left a bad taste in his mouth for it was the farthest thing from the truth. He was no refugee either. He hadn’t defected, but he’d went far against orders. It wasn’t particularly exciting to explore outside the walls and island. Seeing the ocean not so long ago hadn’t ignited any of the excitement he initially had, promising to hold onto that childhood dream with Armin, that he was destined to see the world simply because he was born. Rather it dismayed him to know that he had been wrong, all the future really meant for him was war.

It’s incredibly hard to take it all in, that he’s in the middle of a nation who is so intent on destroying his homeland and everyone just passes him by. So he sits there in the middle of the ground, surrounding himself by those real soldiers who had escaped so much suffering of their own.

It is hell, war. At once they cower at an official imitating an explosion, to laugh at their expense, and he can only look on. He is there in stolen clothes, with a wooden crutch from a deceased soldier who’d only been dampening a hospital bed, and waits and watches as a young boy rushes to some of the veterans and comforts them.

Eren lets his body stay limp, but doesn’t pretend to be as startled like those around him. Yet he watches from the corner of his eye, and the boy too comes to him.

“Your armband is on the wrong arm,” he informs, and gently tugs it off. “It’s okay, I’m sure you’ll get better,” he assures him kindly. “You don’t have to fight any longer.”

The boy gives Eren one last soft look - lifts a knee, supports himself on it to stand, and takes off to run in the way restless children do, like Eren had when he was his age.

 _You don’t have to fight any longer._ Fleetingly, it hurts.

 

Being around the hospital grounds is probably the easiest way Eren can adjust himself to the Marleyan environment. He has alertly picked up that everyone here calls them _island devils_ , and so he ends up thinking that he was right, because everything was exactly as he said it would be, that there was no misunderstandings or “diplomatic relations” to be had with this country. In their enemies' eyes, they were devils, guilty of all the world’s offense at any time.

He watches for people he begins to recognize - guards, and the constant of patients that were in and out. It is most easily observed from a bench on the outskirts of the hospital grounds, and he waits, lingers around.

Yes, the boy comes back, stumbles carefully and keeps his eyes low even as he looks amongst all the staggering patients. Eren doesn’t miss a beat, and as soon as the boy is in earshot, he calls to him: “Heeyyy.”

He stops in his tracks.

“Thanks for the other day,” Eren says nicely, and the kid turns around, obviously gathering the brief recognition of Eren being one of the soldiers he helped. Blemishes stand out angrily on the child’s face, and he tugs at the Eldian armband on his sleeve.

He sits down besides Eren, not reluctantly.

“Um... it looks like you’re recovering well. You’re at least able to talk now,” the boy reasons.

Eren only looks in front of him, to the other side of the hospital grounds where the confining wall stood. “Eh. I’m here for treatment of psychological wounds, but mine are fake.”

The boy lifts his head at this. “Huh?”

“I’ve said I can’t go home because I have memory loss. But in reality, I just don’t want to go back.” An oppressive burden bores on the shoulder he has been shifting his weight to, what with holding the crutch. “It’s too hard for me to face my family now.” That hadn’t been a lie. Effortlessly he had said that, but the pain behind it was very real.

The boy says nothing, only draws his gaze downwards, looking at his head in his lap. Eren cranes his neck a little to face him. “Are you going to tell the hospital staff?”

“No, I wouldn’t do that.”

Eren deems him to be a nice, loyal kid. With that same childlike honesty, hope, and willingness Eren had shed away long ago. He reminds him so much of himself, in an inexplicable way.

He studies the torn face of this poor child, marred with swollen bruises.

“You’re hurt. From training to be a Marleyan warrior?” Eren deduces.

The boy takes a sharp breath. “Yes,” he admits. “But I can’t become a warrior. There’s another talented candidate in my class, and I don’t think I’ll get my turn.”

Eren is thoughtful for a moment. “Oh, that’s good to hear.”

Confusion crosses the boy’s face. “Huh?”

“Because you’re a nice kid. I’d be happy if you lived a long life.”

“But… I don’t want this person to become a soldier.” He sounds miserable, though he isn’t screaming and crying nor sulking. This boy has matured because he feels the weight of war on his shoulders. The weight of wanting to protect someone close to him.

“Why do you say that?”

The boy’s face reddens. Eren briefly gets the impression of Mikasa from when they were both kids, her always softening at his presence. He was blind to those feelings as a child, so they’d been long abandoned, but he understood them well now.

“Is this talented candidate a girl?”

“She’s famous in this district.” He wipes at his pant legs restlessly. “She’s even been recognized for what we did in war already. Just about everyone would say that the next Armor should be her.”

Eren keeps himself still. Of course, so they were also planning to sacrifice Reiner.

The boy speaks ahead of his thoughts. “But I’m powerless. So it’s all going to end without me doing a thing.”

There’s a long silence where Eren thinks about when he had that same mind, and then he’s whisked away into the past again, submerged in the terrorizing memories:

He weeps to the floor as Reiner stands behind him: “ _If I don’t change something… Jean is going to be right. My life is going to end… without me having done… a single thing.”_

He laughs hysterically, screams, cries, thrashes as Mikasa is the one to kneel behind him this time:  _“Nothing changed! You haven’t changed one bit, dammit!”_

_“You’re still as useless as you ever were! Nothing changed!”_

The despondency of it all traced back to why they were there. _Hell._ Why people fought. Why life was so hard to attain.

“I’ve been thinking every day since coming here.” At this he looks around, at those suffering so much all around him. Young, old, middle aged men that could now live only the bleakest life.

“How did things turn out this way? Ruined minds and bodies, people with no freedom left to them.” He lifts his chin slowly at the patients, a phantom gesture. “People who have even lost themselves.” The boy follows Eren’s line of sight as he listens. “What kind of person would _want_ to go to war if they knew they were going to end up like this?”

He thinks of the man in his father’s memories as he continues: “But there was _something_ pushing us all along, causing us to step right into hell. For most of us, that something isn’t of our own will. We’re forced to by others, or by our environment.”

For a brief moment Eren looks at the boy, to see him listening intently.

“But the kind of hell seen by people who push themselves into it is something else,” Eren remarks. “They also see something beyond that hell. Maybe it’s hope. Maybe it’s another hell,” he conjures. Now, the boy’s eyes are glittering, shimmering with something wide, like fear, like a hesitant hope at Eren’s words.

“I don’t know which it is. The only people who do are the ones that keep moving forward.”

Eren looks at the boy again. “You wouldn’t happen to have a name, would you?”

“Falco.”

Eren doesn’t break his gaze. For some time now, he’s decided to take after the man in his father’s memories. _It’s enemies that are on the other side of the ocean._

“Then, call me Mr. Kruger.”

“All right. I’d better be getting on my way,” Falco says, though now he sounds more reluctant to be going.

“I’ll visit you again,” Falco promises, and stands to look at Eren.

Eren stops him without lifting a finger. “Falco, I want to ask you for a favor.”

“What is it, Mr. Kruger?”

Eren pulls an envelope from inside his coat, and holds it out to him in his hand.

“I want to send a letter. But they’ll look inside if I send it from this internment zone, is that right?”

“Yeah,” Falco says.

“Then they’ll figure out if I’m faking an illness if that happens. So I want you to put this in a mailbox outside the internment zone.”

“All right,” Falco says. “Is it to your family?” Though he asks the question, the way he asks it shows no trace of doubt in the man.  
“Yes.” Eren makes no mention that this first letter is addressed to where the Survey Corps are residing in Wall Rose. “I just want to tell my family… that I’m here, and that I’m alright.”

 

—

 

 

It seemed like a bad omen to know that his death could be the next catalyst of it all: if he didn’t protect his friends now, then the future generations would suffer, possibly so until the end of all time. Even more so his half-brother, and they’d both agreed they couldn’t lose any more time. Everyone, Eren excluded, liked to blame it on the problem of international relations when Paradis is the force that binds everyone else in the world together. And if everyone thinks that the spokesperson for Paradis is Eren because he is their Titan, everything is up to what Eren does.

It is not a time for further insubordination. Yet he infiltrates Marley with no one’s permission but his own, through letters sent from Liberio saying he was there to attack and needed them to be stationed there as soon as they could.

He takes the power of the Tyber family’s War Hammer Titan, and destroys the city. And he sees the world through his enemies’ eyes. He has been for some time now.

At the time of his rescue, when he is greeted by the faces of his old comrades - they are of disappointment, he is someone they cannot trust. The disgust of the Captain, the dismay of the Commander, and his friends, broken like glass before him.

There is no point in asking them to hold a little longer when Levi orders his arrest and Hange is the one to jail him. Neither to show his intentions any further. In his mind, he could take on the whole world by just acting on his own. And he thinks, that is something the Survey Corps can’t understand. That, and he’s going to only stay confined for so long.

 _I just keep moving forward_ , he tells himself. And, _fight. If we don’t fight, we can’t win. Fight._

Hange’s interruption is one of the last ticks. He’s shaved (it was nice enough of them to at least supply a few amenities like soap and a razor), and lopped off half his hair, the soft clumps now in the depository vase under the basin. His hands reach up to his scalp, he ties up the rest of his hair in a little messy bun. He’s recognizable.

“Fight,” he chants, surveying his new appearance in the mirror. It was an attempt to restore how he used to look and keep himself, for his return to his homeland.

His hands grip around the sink top as he leans forward, and then he hears the faint click of someone’s boots. He expects it to be one of the guards, but Hange is the one at the bars of his cell.

“What are you doing?” Her voice is pleasant and amiable, the most distant thing from what she was to him last. Eren holds her gaze for a moment, then sharply turns his head back to the mirror.

“Hey, you were just talking to your reflection in the mirror, weren’t you? You were saying to fight. Fight what? If you said to fight twice, does that mean it’s a two-round fight?”

Her signature eccentric humor is a bleak little effort to ease him out. He holds his tongue, and his stare reflecting back at him is a little lidded, a likeness of the irritation of her needling.

Hange starts again: “Staying quiet won’t help me understand.” She pauses. “Although I don’t think you’d normally talk to yourself like that, so I wonder how you must be feeling right now, because I’ve never talked to myself in the mirror before.”

Eren closes his eyes and bends his neck over the dirty basin. This is not a conversation he wants to have.

“I think that hairstyle is cool,” she tries again. “It feels like you’re a little disheveled, or that you’re trying so hard that you don’t even care about your appearance!” she exclaims. Nerves burn at Eren’s temples, an instant surge of the drive he’d had at changing the way he looked to fit his place back on the island.

“What are you here for?!” he snaps.

“What do you mean?” she asks. “I’m here to talk. We spent all night talking about Titans the first time we met, didn’t we?”

She’s trying to reach old memories inside him, to soften him. “You listened to me talk on and on,” she says quietly, and then maintains a brief silence.

It’s unfair of her, he thinks, to now remind him of the days of Squad Levi when she had just admonished him on the airship for not being the same Eren back then.

“I was sure that you wouldn’t sacrifice Historia,” Hange confesses softly.

A deep thrumming starts in Eren’s temples now, pulsing under his skin.

“We hadn’t found another way yet.” It’s an effort to try and explain on behalf of the Survey Corps, clear as day. Maybe to even justify. “Yes, Zeke’s term was closing in, and Marley was moving forward with their plan to move against Paradis faster than we’d expected. I thought I felt just as rushed as you. But I still can’t understand why you acted on your own and put this island in so much trouble. Do you not care about what happens to Historia now?”

It is such a terrible thing of Hange to say and she doesn’t even know it. After so long, a way to protect Historia from the Titan cycle never came through, and he’d given them so much time. And for everything, he didn’t want to subject her to pregnancy and ensuing motherhood at her age, or worse, a life of protecting herself from the inheritance of Titan powers by the way of simply birthing again and again. Eren nearly thought that would be equal to the misery of inheriting the Titan, to be cut short of her life and to be forced into that same role her father had coerced her into not at all long ago.

Historia equally didn’t understand the imminent danger of what she would plunge into when she stated she’d agree to it. And as guilty as he felt, neither could Eren bear the weight of another friend turning Titan on his conscience. That was his responsibility. He had a plan to end the probability that it would come to anyone else.

Hange’s words asked _why_ , as if he hadn’t been forced into making the decision that he had.

“I… ate the War Hammer Titan.”

The last thing Eren can do is threaten Hange as if it’s enough to show her what he really means. It's a sickening moment before Hange’s voice sounds throughout the walls of the cell. “What?”

“This Titan’s power allows its user to create weapons and more from inside the ground by controlling the Titan hardening.” His voice drops a little lower. “It was an annoying enemy.”

Her face comes back into focus as he now looks at her. “In other words, you can’t imprison me, no matter how tough and deep underground the cell is. I can leave here whenever I want.” He takes measured steps towards the bars, as the Commander stands still, her hands thrown at the sides of her ironed uniform coat. “And,” he pronounces, “you _also_ can’t kill me, of course, because I have the Founding Titan.”

Hange only looks up as he towers over her, the bars mere rods separating his face from hers. Those which he reminds her that he can destroy at any time. It is the first time he’s stood up to his higher-ups. He’s been kicked around by Levi, questioned and berated by all else, and _still_ treated as insubordinate when he was backed so far into the corner. And Hange wants his trust after she’s explicitly said that he no longer has theirs.

He practically hovers over her. “And regardless of any threats, you can’t kill Zeke, either.”

He pushes his face closer, until there’s nearly any distance left.

“In other words, Hange,” he says, his voice growing loud with hostility, “I want to know. What _can_ you do?”

With a rapid thrust of his arm between the cell bars, he grabs her by the collar and holds her up. She shouts with confusion and alarm, but the pulsation in his temples is now a heavy, wrenching throb. The markings of his Titan burn under his skin as they emerge to his face. “Tell me, Hange!” he screams. “If there’s another way! _Tell me what it is!_ ”

A wave of immediate remorse washes over him suddenly. It’s the first, the only threat like this he’s made. But also the only thing he can do. Everything Eren’s done has only been because he had no other choice but to. And if he wants to continue and keep moving forward, he _can’t_ work with the Survey Corps. So while they, being back on the island, have the opportunity to devise the next offensive strategy, he is on the other side of the bars, a fist full of Hange’s coat in his grip. Then so be it, these are the people who he must turn his back to, even if only to protect them from themselves.

He releases her with a little less force than which he had when he’d grabbed her. She stumbles backwards and curses.

As she storms down the cell’s hall, Eren hears her shout at him - “Child” - and he grips the bars - “Still acting rebellious, you idiot?” - twisting his palms around metal, frustrated at _still_ being treated like he’s a rebellious little teenager again, his plans of no direction.

He slinks back to the mirror with his hands around the sink top’s edges, and watches the inflamed lines on his cheeks mold into flesh.

 

 

—

 

 

He understands that in their eyes, he had betrayed their trust, for the rest of the world now has their sights set for this island that he lives on. But he can say that he knew how it would happen, because he had a plan set for whatever came after that, too.

_Eren…_

_Do you have any idea what you’ve done?_

He sits with a knee pulled to his chest, focusing his line of vision to the wall beside him.

_You… killed civilians. Even children._

_There is no undoing this._

Suddenly his face clenches tight. He is screwing his eyes shut, teeth gnashing and scraping hard; he draws his fists to his head to protect his ears as he hears the bang of artillery fire resounding in his head, cracking in his skull. His Titan roars, and his arms and back harden to intercept the shells in time. The crystal of the War Hammer Titan strikes underneath the earth to impale the men at the firing line.

This is the first nightmare he’s had since the last time he was imprisoned - only this time he’s really awake, but can’t do anything to stop it - and it’s so long that it feels like it’s never over. All he can see piled above him is the remains of people, crushed under broken buildings, in Liberio, in Shiganshina. His mother. Some children, some of which wearing the Eldian armband of the nine-pointed star. The petrified face of Falco Grice.

_...K-Kruger? You...You tricked me!_

_Connie. Sasha… what were her final words?_

The images die down, and now flicker slowly, little captures in time. Eren holds his head in his hands. Rocks slowly.

_Looks like you fell in a pile of shit, Eren._

_Captain._

A splitting pain shoots through his neck, the front of Levi’s boot comes flying all over again.

_This really brings me back, Eren… you’re as easy to kick as ever._

Beads of sweat have found their way to Eren’s back; he feels like he’s overheating. His breath is shallow, and his world is dizzying. But he blinks steadily.

_I’m the same as you. Past the ocean, inside the walls, we’re all the same._

He stops and thinks hard about moving forward.

He agrees with this recurring train of thought that settles his heartbeat, puts him into focus: _Fight. Win. I keep moving forward -_ and he calms enough that eventually it passes. By the time he thinks about laying down again to get sleep, there’s the telltale sound of someone coming to his cell. Whoever it is wanders near the bars with an oil lamp, swaying with the movement of walking - though Eren has no way of telling of either it is day or night as the hours have melted together more and more in his brain.

The figure lifts the lamp to its face, and it is Floch Forster.

“Tomorrow would be timely enough to leave,” Floch urges. “Eldia’s restoration awaits yet another day, and Zeke will be in attendance.”

Eren stares at him, once again void of emotion, perched atop his bunk. More than likely, the Survey Corps already knew better than to let a meeting between himself and Zeke occur yet had no power to stop him. It was made abundantly clear to Hange, and soon enough to anyone - superior to him or not.

“I already made the decision that I will leave on my own.”

Like Eren had initially sensed in the devout followers he’d started to collect, Floch’s aim was to participate in the genocide of as many as possible if only to liberate Eldia. Eren was more than aware that Floch had intentionally bombed civilians in Marley. That same genocide was furthest from Eren’s wish, and war was hell. He didn’t want future generations to be subject to hell, nor his friends right now. And with the way fate was treating him now, it seemed like neither could be saved without one being damned.

“We need you to lead the new Eldian empire,” Floch reminds him, and he sounds urgent and crazed. Sounds much like Yelena ten months ago, informing Eren of what Marley was capable of, and what Eren could do in return.

Eren’s eyes shift to the other side of the cell to indicate his disinterest. Floch slips his fingers through the cell’s bars before treading away to leave Eren to his privacy. That night, Eren finally sleeps sitting with his head hanging down.

 

It was much more difficult to really conceal his thoughts for the daytime, to prepare for the way he’d act. He knew that leaving the cell meant what his friends would inevitably see as betrayal. As grim as it is, Eren has no choice.

More so the reserved understanding that took over because this was something he had to do - meant it was a good a time as ever to test the powers of the War Hammer Titan. For a moment it feels that he’s finally himself again; it feels liberating, strengthening.

Eren closes his eyes and rests his forehead against the wall, hands flat against brick, and feels a tempered energy shifting under his palms. It travels down to connect with whatever is under the ground, and rises up in shoots of crystal that elongate, growing like intertwining vines.

He wills them to drill into the cell, drives it by his purpose. Flames brand his cheeks and the inner surface of his unweathered hands. He doesn’t know how to feel that all of him controls this stolen power, but he bends it from below the earth, and he pushes it as far as his body will take. His brow trembles, twitches - it’s forever more difficult to wield this power when he isn’t completely transformed into a Titan, and something irresistible urges him to do it, to transform, and to leave it all behind so that he can destroy everything.

He won’t give in. The duty to protect his friends still stands. 

Instead, he takes deep breaths and cools, and walks through the caving tunnel he’s made. Barefoot, the rubble strikes the soles of his feet. But he sidesteps stray pieces of crystal that had broken off and passes under the stalagmites that have grown around him. With a little more vigor, he summons the power again, and crystal erupts to seal off the gaping hole he’d made. It keeps the tunnel from collapsing in on itself.

He turns away and starts walking without looking back, but something weighs heavily on him with each step of the way.

 

—

 

 

“Lots of people.” Eren surveys the followers before him, who watch with murmurs and whispers and stand at attention, ready for him to order them to save their nation. “How many are there exactly?”

Floch stands in the front of them all as if Eren’s designated right-hand man, holds Eren’s old thick coat in his hands. It had been confiscated a long while ago and once Floch got a hold of it, it was probably treated as some artifact in keeping. “The prison guard that rescued us from prison, and the prison guard that allowed us to meet here right now - they are inside the military right now, hiding.”

He pauses. “There is also another one who blew up Darius Zackley with a bomb. As the military wanted someone they were comfortable with to inherit your Founding Titan.” No sooner after the comment of Zackley’s death, Floch speaks of the military with a lingering taste of disgust. He lifts the coat from his hands and pushes it into Eren’s arms.

“But you’re the only person who can save Eldia. Eren Yeager.”

Wordlessly Eren dons the coat and turns his back to Floch and the others. “I’ll locate Zeke,” he dismisses him. “That’s it.”

But as Eren walks now, Floch trails just behind him, still followed by dozens of other Eldians. It was almost unsettling.

Floch continues again: “All who are rallying against the government and military know how competent of a leader that you are.” He repeats the ideals of a fanatic cult to which Eren should be the leader of. Eren keeps his eyes ahead. He is here leading disciples on a pilgrimage, and it strikes him hard, because he doesn’t want to string them along too far. “And you’re telling me that’s why someone chose to kill Zackley?”

Floch hesitates, falls a trace behind as Eren walks ahead. “It was how the people reacted once they knew he was bombed. They said to dedicate your hearts.”

Despite everything, Eren still restrains his grimace on the old military salute, his impassive look curving anything he feels.

“It couldn’t be that you are having second thoughts of the restoration. You’re our leader,” Floch says adamantly.

Eren falls into quietude again to protect his thoughts. He cannot afford to be afraid, that throughout all the efforts he had done to protect the people of this island and for all the innocent people he’s killed and have died for him - that all Paradisians will die too and will _never_ see freedom. Freedom is worth that lie, at that cost. And so he keeps moving forward.

 

They make their way to the forest before sundown. Natural light spills over plains as far as the eye can see, blocked by only trees that stretch to the sky. Eren doesn’t allow the others in: instead he orders them to make their way around it and roam land free of Titans in open country, forbidding them from dispersing themselves through it. There was no telling if Zeke was here and especially not under the watch of the Survey Corps. Eren knew that much at best.

Fading patches of light shine around the branches of the trees. He turns his gaze up heavenward to look at each one carefully and follow its path, concentrates on the sound of soft dirt pressed beneath his feet.

From the corner of his eye he sees it, a blotch of green among tall redwoods. He knows that Levi has already spotted him, his eyes are set on him. So he stops in his tracks and looks at the cloaked figure, his hands drawn to his sides.

“Eren,” Captain Levi says. “I take it you’re fed up of being contained.”

Eren unhooks the coat’s hood from around his neck. “Yes,” he says mildly. He has hopes that this will turn civil, because if it doesn't, then all the promises Levi made about being able to handle Eren would be for naught.

He shifts his path of vision around the tall trees, in and out, but there isn’t a sign of his brother. “You’re holding Zeke hostage.”  
  
“And will continue to do so until I get orders on what to do with him,” Levi replies, leaning his back against bark. He seems weary and worn like that, like Eren is another great burden he’s also been tasked to.

Neither of them move and yet it is far from an uneasy silence. Eren looks beyond the trees further into the forest, but finds and senses nothing. If Zeke is here, he must be further in - in the center, and Levi is only guarding the outpost.

“Eren. Are you going to let me stop you?” Levi asks.

Eren shakes his head. “I made a choice.”

Levi is silent again. Eren can’t see it from where he stands yet knows the Captain must be closing his eyes. It throws them both into a distant memory long ago, when Eren couldn’t save the people who died here for him. Paradisians he could not protect, before they knew the truth about Titans, or that they weren’t the only humans in the world. When Eren was much younger and had faith in and could trust his friends.

He closes his eyes too, and images fly past his mind again, the corpses of all those that had died for him. He wasn’t sure if he was either lost to the past or was acting in the present, but his hand comes to his mouth, and he feels teeth graze his knuckle.

Frantically it stops him, crashing over him in a force of pure terror. He almost physically feels it as if being pushed deeper, deeper into the memory. _Eren! What are you doing? That’s_ only _allowed when your life is in danger._

The image isn’t lucid, but he sees Petra’s mangled face, and shivers wrack him as he thinks about how he couldn’t save her. No - he was determined not to make that same mistake. That was why he was here...

Another voice cuts her fading one off: _Whether you trust in your own strength or trust in the choices made by reliable comrades, no one knows what the outcome will be. So as much as you can, choose whatever you’ll regret the least._

A splitting pain drives at his nerves, two central spots on either side of his forehead. He can’t tell what he was looking at, or where he is until he comes to. And he blinks a couple times and he’s still standing in the middle of the Titan forest, his hand at his side, looking blankly ahead at where Levi is still standing.

“I thought you might understand,” Eren says, gravely. “I can’t work with the Survey Corps.”

“It’s a little late to tell me why,” Levi answers. He hooks his 3DM gear to a near tree and scales down. They stand far apart, and Levi crosses his arms as if he’s willing to listen.

Eren shakes his head. “Everything I do has to be on my own. It’s always been that way. Do you remember? Even here…” He gestures around them as if to stir a memory to wound Levi, that this was the place where Squad Levi died because Eren didn’t act on his own. It hurts him, too.

Levi marches right up to him and puts a sword to his throat.

Eren doesn’t stop him. “You made me abandon my humanity to fight the Titans. I can’t stop now. If we back down, then we won’t be free.” Levi is calm and does not falter, the blade stays pressed to his larynx.

“You put this island in danger,” Levi points out. “There were many people who paid for that.”

“I know.”

“When you make a choice, you’re still not going to know the outcome.”

“I made the choice to fight,” Eren says.

Levi grimaces. “Are you planning to transform?”

“If that is what it takes.”

Eren closes his eyes and wraps his hand around the sword.

If Levi cuts him, or if he grips it too hard, it will cut his palm and he will have means to transform. If he lets him go, then they won’t fight. Levi seems to understand, no words needed. He withdraws the sword. And Eren opens his eyes.

“What are you planning to do?”

“Fight,” Eren answers. “I don't want to see my friends die anymore.”

Levi nods, even if he looks pained. Eren understands because he knows he's coming around. But Levi's voice is dark. “You’ve always been an insubordinate little shit. I hated it."

“Take me to Zeke,” Eren says, and Levi complies.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!!!


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